The work of the Holy Spirit - pagina 575

LOVE AND THE COMFORTER

535

on the ground a tangled mass, they needed to be comAnd were they now to forted as one whom his mother comforts. more be left as orphans, since He who had comforted them even answers: And Jesus tenderly than a mother was to go away?

would

lie

you orphans, I will send you another Comforter, that He may abide with you forever." Thus the deep meaning of Christ's word, that the Holy Spirit is our Comforter, naturally discloses itself. Of course, in order to "

No.

I

will not leave

comfort us

by means

He must

of love.

personally be with us. One can comfort only It is the lifting of the too heavy cross from the

shoulders, the constant whispering of loving words, the gathering of affliction, the tears, the patient listening to the complaints of our

sympathizing with our suffering, the being oppressed with our disSurely, even tresses, the identification with our suffering person. cast a ray can land distant a from a gift can afford comfort; a letter a way that such in us comfort but to of hope into the troubled soul; loves, and revives soul the and shoulder, the burden falls from the in its love expecting to rejoice— such comfort we can expect only from the living person who, coming to us with the key to our heart,

cherishes us with the

warmth

of his

own

soul.

And since no one else can always be with us, wholly enter into our sorrows, fully understand and comfort us with infinite love, He abides with us fortherefore is the Holy Spirit the Comforter. ever, enters the

deep places

of

every soul, listens to every throb of

the heart, is able to relieve us of all our cares, takes all our troubles

upon Himself, and by His tender and divinely loving words and sweet communion raises us out of our comfortless condition.

This glorious work of the Holy Spirit must be studied with extreme carefulness. You can compare it, not to that of the artist who chisels a statue out of marble, but to that of the godly mother who with sacrificing love studies the characters of her children, watches over their souls while they themselves have no thought of it, nurses them in sickness, prays with them and for them so that they might learn to

pray for themselves, bends a listening ear to their trifling griefs, and who in and through all this spends the energy of her soul with warnings and admonitions, now chiding, then caressing, to draw their souls to God.

And

yet,

even

this is

no comparison

;

for all the sacrifices of the

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